Body Slam — Jesse Ventura

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Perhaps predictably, Ventura clashed noisily and often with fellow council members. But he looks back on his four-year tenure in office as a success. He recalls persuading an 85-employee local firm not to relocate elsewhere: "It wasn't like I promised them anything, I just told them how much they meant to our city." He also claims credit for upgrading his police officers' weaponry and the subsequent decline in gang activity on the streets. "We made it undesirable for them to be there. It's called firearm superiority."

But Rick Engh, a 14-year town-council member who was mayor pro tem under Ventura, has less happy memories of those days: "I probably served more as mayor than he did. He was always away making movies and everything." Engh also charges that Ventura was "two-faced." One of his initiatives as mayor was to stop cigarettes from being sold at convenience stores. "Yet," Engh says, "he would sit there at the meetings chewing snuff and spitting in the cup. I thought that was rude and disrespectful to the audience."

Ventura did not abandon his rough habits or smooth his swagger during the gubernatorial campaign, and a plurality of the audience evidently felt charmed rather than insulted. He brandished his cigars, a habit he says he picked up on a movie set from Arnold Schwarzenegger. ("Jeh-see," he intones in a convincing Terminator imitation, "have a sto-gie.") On the hustings, Ventura regularly told audiences what pollsters could have warned him they didn't want to hear. At a rally at the University of Minnesota, he reminded students that he opposed expanding government subsidies for college tuition. "If you're smart enough to be here," he roared, "you're smart enough to get through it," meaning college. "Have we become that dependent on government?" When his opponents, once they recognized him as an actual threat, accused him of knowing nothing about running a $12 billion-a-year state government employing 48,000 people, Ventura responded in essence that he didn't have all the answers but would damned sure roll up his sleeves and learn them once he was elected.

For all his basso profundo bluster, Ventura waged a campaign well within the mainstream of Minnesota political thinking. Outsiders view the state as a bastion of liberalism--witness Eugene McCarthy, Vice Presidents Humphrey and Mondale--but insiders disagree. Carleton College's Schier says Minnesota "is actually a quirky populist state. It gave 24% of its vote during the 1992 presidential election to Ross Perot." Ventura's fiscal conservatism--no tax increases, the return of all future state budget surpluses to taxpayers--struck a responsive chord. So did his moderate-to-libertarian views on keeping government from meddling unduly in private lives.

During the campaign, Ventura was quoted as musing aloud about legalizing prostitution. On the record, he denied favoring such a move but added, "Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot legislate stupidity. People are going to do stupid things. We cannot sit and every time someone does something stupid, make it a law and have the government come in, because if you do that, you're going to lose your freedoms." The macho former wrestler had this to say about why he favored gay rights: "Love is bigger than government."